Studies Highlight Shift in Mobile Phone Usage

As cell phones become ubiquitous and multifaceted, the ways in which we use them is dramatically shifting.

According to a survey by RingCentral, more business professionals would rather give up their morning cup of coffee than their smartphones, and Smartphones rank alongside having intimate relationships as the number one thing respondents couldn’t live without.

Smartphones are starting to trespass on the computer’s territory as well, with 34 percent of respondents saying they use smartphones more than computers to do business.

A new survey by the PEW research group shows a dramatic increase in the number of people who use cell phones to access the Internet from 2009.

According to the study, 40 percent of American adults use the Internet, e-mail or instant messaging on a mobile phone (up from 39 percent of Americans who did this in 2009).

And the demographics from the PEW study are of interest too. “Cell phone ownership is higher among African-Americans and Latinos than among whites (87 percent vs. 80 percent).”

Minorities tend to use a broad array of features offered by the phones. Sixty-four percent of African-Americans access the Internet from a laptop or mobile phone, an increase from the 57 percent who did so in 2009.

As smartphones become more versatile and companies increasingly position themselves to augment data downloading services, it is likely that “smart” will increasingly supplant “phone” as the reason people carry their mobile devices.

According to ComScore, Data revenues, which come from Web browsing, messaging and wireless application downloads are more-fertile revenue streams than money coming from phone usage.